Gotye makes history at the Grammys

By Lawrence Champness

Gotye (aka Mr Wally De Backer) has added to his huge global success by winning the big one, 'Record of the Year' at the 2013 Grammy Awards for "Somebody I Used to Know" with Kimbra. He walked away with 'Best Alternative Music Album' and 'Best Pop Duo/Group Performance' with Kimbra.

"Somebody I Used to Know" has been a smash hit across the world, hitting number one in 18 countries including the US and the UK, as well as reaching an incredible 373,922,912 people on youtube at the time of writing this article.

The only Australian to win record of the year previously was Olivia Newton-John with I Honestly Love You in 1975.

Last year, Dom Knight from 702 ABC Sydney had the chance to catch up with Gotye and find out all about his work.

He started off by asking Gotye (aka Wally De Backer) about how he started making music.

"I started when I was around twenty, when I bought my first desktop PC and I used some software called ACID music that I saw a friend using... I had a bit of a record collection. I bought a turntable and then did all sorts of engineering no no's...made heaps of mistakes and kept doing that for years"

Gotye is a real sound artist, harvesting samples from old vinyl and creating sounds in the most unlikely of places.

One of those places is the Winton Musical Fence in Queensland.

What is a musical fence?

Gotye gave us a good description:

" It's twenty-five metres in one direction in an L-Shape and twenty-five metres in another direction... Five metal strings, they are kind of like large bass guitar strings but at great length and they're connected to wooden posts and at a point along them they are also connected to a wooden cubby house which is a resonate chamber. So if you put your ear or a microphone in that chamber you get natural amplification for whatever you are doing with the strings"

Gotye would hit and pluck the fence and record the sounds.

"I didn't have a direct intention for the sounds when I first recorded them...Sometimes they suggest the beginning, the nucleus of a song, but sometimes they just kinda live as an idea somewhere that is unconnected to a song concept and then later they find their place I chopped them around a bit and pitch shifted them and they became the baseline (for Eyes Wide Open)."

The image of Gotye enthusiastically banging the fence for such a key part of

one of his songs sits very well alongside the image of him recording and collecting sounds from around the world,

"I was actually very keen to record elevator dings while I was on my recent tour in the United States.

There is an amazing array of sounds when you call an elevator in American hotel rooms. A lot of them need repair, and they are the best ones, especially the digital ones"

These sorts of sounds are key to the music of Gotye.

"Usually songs for me are prompted by the play with sounds....reactions to playing with odd things, samples from the musical fence, breaks from a record that I combine with other breaks and play around with what the textures and the chords feel like they are suggesting. That's when I feel like I get a glimpse of what the song could be."

Kimbra's part in "Somebody That I Used To Know" is a very important part of the successful song that certainly brings texture to the song and a real sense of emotion.

"The second me and Kimbra got together, just in her apartment in east Melbourne, pretty much the second she started singing, I thought ok, she's got a kind of feel for this. A kind of interpretation, a kind of an intensity and darkness,she instantly gets it."

When Dom Knight asked Gotye about why he thinks the song has exploded so much, he had this to say, "There is an element of randomness but also an element of persistence. Sticking around, trying to write good material for a while. Sometimes it's timing and luck. It's a lot of factors.The video clip has been instrumental, people sharing it on Youtube and Facebook."

The video clip has been a viral hit on the internet and the style of the clip has also been parodied many times.

Artist Emma Hack painted the bodies of Gotye and Kimbra for the clip.

"Kimbra had the longest shot, the most difficult, eight hours straight standing still against a wall, while Emma dabbed bits of paint on her." Said Gotye.

So when can we expect new material from Gotye ?

"I've been so, unexpectedly, massive internationally that I haven't had a spare second. I've been enjoying it but there hasn't been a chance to write new material."

Maybe when Gotye does get the chance he will retreat to where he worked on his last album.

Incredibly, one of the biggest albums of the last year was produced in a barn, as Gotye explains,

"I did a lot of it in a barn on my folks' block, which my dad built. I kind of convinced him to let me take over two rooms upstairs and I sort of plonked myself there for two years and worked on the album."

Let's hope Gotye can get back into the barn and make more great music soon.